Pray, Love, Eat

I read from somewhere that if you tell everyone (maybe not literally everyone) what you want to do and you will across someone who will help you get it/achieve it. This year, as part of my 2013 checklist, I want to have a Spiritual Adviser and a Financial Adviser. I was able to have both those two in less than three months.

PRAY

Late last May, I decided, proactively, that I needed a spiritual adviser. I approached the catholic church (literally I went to the church) and got dismayed. In respect for my religion, I will not write about it in detail.

Then a friend invited me to a Christian community gathering. When I asked what it is, he said " Sort of Alive-alive..."(referring to those church groups singing gospel songs singing Jesus is Alive forevermore). I attended just to see what it is like out other, other than the Catholicism that I grew up with. Then one day, I found myself agreeing to a bible study, and reserving a day in my week for this. I did not convert (knowing Filipinos have this need to be associated to a certain religion or church group), I know my self as spiritual and not religious. Somehow along the way, it provided me a sense of calmness, peace and balance.

One workday, in the middle of a black out, I got off the phone with the church that I initially asked for an appointment with. After sort-of turning me down, I expressed my disappointment to one of my colleagues. He suggested an alternative. To make the story short, I found my self setting up an appointment with one of the nuns in Tagaytay. The appointment was a month in the making, our schedules could not meet, and I don't know how to get to Tagaytay via commute. So our first session was via airmail. She sent me a book with a letter (after our touch base via text message) with the first instruction on how and where to start.

I had forgotten how much I missed getting things like this in the mail

LOVE

Three weeks after I got my package, our schedules finally met. I reserved an entire day to go and see my spiritual adviser, whom I've never met, only through a text message. Next thing I knew, I was commuting my way, alone, to Tagaytay and there I met her for the first time.

Honestly, I was prepared to talk about dealing with the death of my father. But then, I don't know what happened suddenly she was able to make me open up about my relationship baggage that I've had for years and some of them I was not even aware of and stuff that I've never been honest to anyone, except her. I got asked tough questions and then suddenly I was hearing liberating, brutally honest statements like:

"You were not really in love with each other. It's both of your energies sucking up each other, and energies travel..."

"It's a manifestation of your internal shift..."

"Maybe something in you have not gotten over the rejection..."

"Maybe part of you has this guilt..."

"This is where the end of it was a blessing because it saved the two of you from a whole lot of complications that will start from there..."

I remember her smiling at me when my eyes lit up from the statement "you were not really in love...". I finally understood it. I have no idea how she was able to ransack my brain and thoughts out, when all I was prepared and focused to talk about is how to deal with the loss of a parent. I have no intention of bringing up my record of bad relationships and then after having spoken to her... it actually freed me.

I cannot tell you how much heaviness from my heart was lifted up (I told her, jokingly, that I estimated around 60 pounds of me was lifted up on that meeting alone) and to think it came from a stranger. Honestly, I prayed for a spiritual adviser and what I got was more than what I hoped and prayed for. It felt like I got a shrink at the same time. She was not intimidating, not even wearing a nun's outfit (turned out she's something else and even better), she's not the typical "holy" person throwing bible verses here and there.

She told me:

"It gives you courage, look what you have done today. You traveled alone all the way to get here, to meet a stranger." 

 I'm really grateful that I had this opportunity. I officially have a Spiritual Adviser.

EAT

Part of the things that I accidentally blurted during my session with my spiritual adviser was one of my greatest and private fears. I talked about how I missed having a life that I can selfishly call my own, how I used to live independently and call all the shots in my life, like when I was twenty-five. I am grounded enough to know it will not come back and I just have to suck it up and deal with my reality.

Then she shared her personal experiences when she was in London. That she came to a decision to be happy, because she said that Happiness is a choice, it is a decision. While Filipinos, especially ladies, don't usually dine alone or go to a movie alone, when she was abroad it was normal.

"I already did that, " I told her. "When I still live in Makati, I watched a movie alone, I ate at a restaurant alone, and I grabbed a bottle of beer after shift, alone."

Thinking I was proud, I realized that, while I did those "alone things" I did it in places I would not run into anyone, like the movie theater and restaurant that is 5 mins from my old apartment, a nearby after-work bar that is also 5 mins from my office building, but none in my circle of friends hang out.

We all have this fear of what people might think, and this age of social media, most of us now are concerned with what our social media profiles look like, rather than what it really feels on the inside. I know because I've been that way in 2009 until I studied about it in 2010. Bottom line is, it all boils down to how much we care about what people still think about us.

And so, with a fresh new perspective and the start of my internal liberation, there in the middle of a family restaurant, by the couch where there is 80% chance of seeing someone I know, I ordered for one and started to befriend the unknown.